The following is the complete text of the unclassified F.B.I. memo, read on the Senate floor by Senator Durbin.<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>As requested, here is a brief summary of what I observed at GTMO.<br><br>On a couple of occassions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defacated on themselves, and had been left therefor 18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the MP's what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconcious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night. On another occassion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. (source)<p><hr></blockquote><p>It's kind of funny what some people become outraged by. In this case, some people manufactured outrage that the above action would be suggested more at home in a totalitarian regime than in America. Is that inaccurate? Is forcing people to [censored] themselves right at home next to baseball and apple pie?<br><br>-- Charlie Alpha Roger Yankee Whiskey<br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>It's kind of funny what some people become outraged by. In this case, some people manufactured outrage that the above action would be suggested more at home in a totalitarian regime than in America. Is that inaccurate? Is forcing people to [censored] themselves right at home next to baseball and apple pie?<p><hr></blockquote><p>I can see where Durbin got the idea to equate these interrogation methods with Nazi's marching millions of innocent men, women and children to their deaths in gas chambers. I never quite saw it until you opened my eyes, Professor. Here, you get a smiley face for this one . . .<br><br><br><br>

Yeah! Go Torture!<br><br>So, so long as the United States kills fewer than... we'll say a million people, we're ethically in the clear and allowed to chain people to the floor in their own excrement?<br><br>Someone pass me the electrodes! It's time to celebrate our heritage!<br><br>-- Charlie Alpha Roger Yankee Whiskey<br>

I assume that like most contractors working on government contracts, that they guys who were supposed to build the "communal showers" embezzled the money, and either didn't get round to finishing them, or forgot all that fancy extra pipework!<br><br><br><br>We all do what we do for the same reason: because it seems like a good idea at the time.

_________________________I used to think it was terrible that life was unfair. Then I thought what if life were fair and all of the terrible things that happen came because we really deserved them? Now I take comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe.

You got it!<br><br>Besides, what would you suggest we do with them, Cary, send them to the Cook county Jail? Put 'em up at the Drake? Feed them dinner at The Berghoff? Beg their pardon while asking them, politely of course, what their intentions were while fighting American troops on the battlefield?<br><br>

Toture is not something to be proud of, but it is a tool. I'm not a soldier and I bet I'd be usless in combat. But there are those who are good at what they do. We don't like to talk about it, but the information they gather saves lives. <br><br>If you could have stopped 9-11 from happening by toturing someone, would you have done it? No, you don't have to answer. For most of us, it's an impossible question to answer because we don't feel the gravity of what's at risk. <br>I'm not mocking you.<br><br>On the surface I feel I could hurt someone to save a few hundred lives. But then I think about what it would be like to cause pain to a human being, their expressions, the sounds. I don't think I could do it. <br><br>But I will say this; just because I can't doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. If someone has the aswers to how to stop people dying, but won't talk, then find the guy who can do the job. <br><br>We shouldn't glory in the use of toture. We should be thankful that lives are saved. Those terrorists chose to use their lives to kill us. They now face the weight of making that decision. It's not for us to exercise pity on them just because they were caught. If let go, they will kill us. They will teach others to hate and kills us. No, they must and will pay the price of being murders in what ever fashion that payment must be made.<br><br>

Completely setting aside the moral reprehensibility of torture for a moment, there still is absolutely no grounds to support torture on a mechanical level.<br><br>I totally understand your point. The idea that one could do harm in one act in prevention of a horrible atrocity is along the same reasonable allowance of self defense. However, when used with torture, this is presupposed on a few very important things that are totally unsupportable, or at worst non-existant: the suspect has information, torture will get it effectively and accurately, and that information is not accessible by any other reasonable method.<br><br>Strike one: There is no way to prove that torture is the only way to get the hypothetical information we are speaking about.<br><br>Strike two: These suspects are not at all proven to be of use to American intelligence other than the presupposition that since they are being abused, they must know something.<br><br>Strike three: Torture is not effective. This is not my opinion, but that of physiologists, Colin Powel, and the history of United States policy against torture. It is a means of coercion. Someone under torture will say whatever the person doing the torture wants them to irrespective of the truth.<br><br>So even if you ignore the values we hold dear, and the price of adopting the same techniques of brutal totalitarian regimes, torture is still wrong.<br><br>I agree. Terrorists and those willing to hurt regular American citizens should pay for their actions. They should have their cases tried and convicted if guilty. However, torture is not excusable under any circumstance by any civilized society.<br><br>-- Charlie Alpha Roger Yankee Whiskey<br>

I don't see anywhere in my memory of September 11th that it was a mandate for us to adopt the very same moral attitudes of terrorists. The point here, which I believe some people are avoiding purposefully, is that there are a ton of things that differentiate us Americans from Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and even the Taliban and Al Queda, our policies on human rights should be one of them.<br><br>-- Charlie Alpha Roger Yankee Whiskey<br>

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